The COVID-19 pandemic has created a huge list of challenges for businesses. One that is potentially going unnoticed or under-reported is cybersecurity. Specifically, as lockdown ends and as individuals return to offices and places of work, it may be the case that something malicious is already waiting for them on their devices. Here we take a look at the cyber risks of remote workers returning to the office.

Working remotely has its own personal challenges in terms of productivity: between the cat walking across your keyboard and the kids dropping in on your Zoom meetings, workers across the globe have had to adjust to doing their job in a different way. Organisations also had to swiftly transition to employees working remotely, and this has introduced a new set of risks from a cyber security perspective.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, many organisations have had to make a swift transition to remote working to ensure business continuity. What would typically take months of planning and preparation was implemented in a matter of days. The chaos that this created, combined with the already uncertain nature of life during a pandemic, had created the ideal environment for cybercriminals.

The crown Jewels, part of the Royal Collection, are the most powerful symbols of the British Monarchy. They are housed in the ‘Jewel House’, vault at the Tower of London. Ever since attempts have been made to steal the crown jewels their security has been tightened. Conventional methods to protect the crown jewels are not sophisticated enough to stop the highly motivated adversarial threats. Let’s take a closer look at how these jewels are protected.

Over the last few weeks, most organisations have had to transition to enable their employees to work remotely. The key focus has been on business continuity during this trying time. Unfortunately, business continuity isn’t so easy. Keeping the day-to-day operations of the business running has been one of the hardest IT challenges that most organisations have faced in the last decade. It’s one for which many organisations might not have had a plan in place.

We are entering a very different business world at the moment, one which has been thrust upon most of us far quicker than we planned for and will by all accounts last a lot longer than many of us think.

With a majority of the workforce now adopting a work-from-home routine, maintaining the normal functioning of your network and ensuring compliance with industry standards is not an easy job. When employees are working remotely, it is especially crucial to ensure network compliance with industry standards and internal policies to secure your network from cybersecurity breaches.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force employees to work from home, businesses are facing new and unique challenges to ensure business continuity. When remote work is mandated due to COVID-19, the transition isn’t smooth for many businesses; not every business has the infrastructure to make the abrupt shift, even given the immediate need to go remote.